Explicit Anomalous Cognition: A Review of the Best Evidence in Ganzfeld, Forced-choice, Remote Viewing and Dream Studies
📄 Original study📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
This is the ultimate lab-based ESP report card, pulling together evidence from four ways scientists test psychic perception: ganzfeld (a sensory-deprivation setup), forced-choice guessing, remote viewing (describing a hidden distant target), and dream telepathy. The headline? People who seem to have a knack for this absolutely crush it — ganzfeld hit rates jump from 27% to over 40%, and experienced remote viewers need remarkably few trials to show a real effect. The review also prescribes best practices for future work: pre-register studies, run proper power analyses, and use modern meta-analytic methods. Both a scoreboard and a how-to guide for next-generation ESP research.
Research Notes
The most comprehensive single-source review of laboratory ESP evidence across all four major paradigms, providing specific replication prescriptions for each. Chapter in the Cardeña, Palmer, & Marcusson-Clavertz handbook (2015); actual authors are Baptista, Derakhshani, and Tressoldi (not May/Marwaha, who are editors of a different volume).
Comprehensive review of laboratory ESP evidence across four major paradigms: ganzfeld, forced-choice, remote viewing, and dream ESP. Synthesizes data from all existing meta-analyses through 2014, conducts new moderator variable and heterogeneity analyses, and identifies participant selection as a powerful moderator across paradigms. Selected participants consistently produce larger effect sizes — 40.1% ganzfeld hit rate (vs. 27.3% unselected), 87.5% forced-choice significance rate in optimal conditions, and experienced RV viewers achieving ES = 0.385 requiring only 33 trials for 80% power. Concludes with methodological prescriptions including pre-registration, power analysis, random-effects meta-analytic methods, and I² heterogeneity statistics.
Related Papers
Cites
- Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Bem, Daryl J (1994)
- Meta-Analysis of Free-Response Studies, 1992–2008: Assessing the Noise Reduction Model in Parapsychology — Storm, Lance (2010)
- "Future Telling": A Meta-Analysis of Forced-Choice Precognition Experiments, 1935-1987 — Honorton, Charles (1989)
- An Assessment of the Evidence for Psychic Functioning — Utts, Jessica (1996)
- Does Psi Exist? Lack of Replication of an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer — Milton, Julie (1999)
- A Joint Communiqué: The Psi Ganzfeld Controversy — Hyman, Ray (1986)
- Updating the Ganzfeld Database: A Victim of Its Own Success? — Bem, Daryl J (2001)
- Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: The Case of Non-Local Perception, a Classical and Bayesian Review of Evidences — Tressoldi, Patrizio E (2011)
- Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis — Mossbridge, Julia (2012)
- The Capricious, Actively Evasive, Unsustainable Nature of Psi: A Summary and Hypotheses — Kennedy, J.E (2003)
- Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding — Targ, Russell (1974)
- Decision Augmentation Theory: Toward a Model of Anomalous Mental Phenomena — May, Edwin C (1995)
- Does Psi Exist? Comments on Milton and Wiseman's (1999) Meta-Analysis of Ganzfeld Research — Storm, Lance (2001)
- Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2011)
- Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect — Bem, Daryl J (2011)
- Information and Uncertainty in Remote Perception Research — Dunne, Brenda J (2003)
Also by these authors
Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis
Raising the value of research studies in psychological science by increasing the credibility of research reports: the transparent Psi project
Anomalous Cognition: An Umbrella Review of the Meta-Analytic Evidence
More in Overview
Editorial: Emerging Research: Self-Ascribed Parapsychological Abilities
When the Truth Is Out There: Counseling People Who Report Anomalous Experiences
What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models
Is the Sun Conscious?
Inner Experience – Direct Access to Reality: A Complementarist Ontology and Dual Aspect Monism Support a Broader Epistemology
📋 Cite this paper
Baptista, Johann, Derakhshani, Max, Tressoldi, Patrizio (2015). Explicit Anomalous Cognition: A Review of the Best Evidence in Ganzfeld, Forced-choice, Remote Viewing and Dream Studies. Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century (E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz, Eds.), McFarland.
@article{baptista_2015_explicit_anomalous_cognition,
title = {Explicit Anomalous Cognition: A Review of the Best Evidence in Ganzfeld, Forced-choice, Remote Viewing and Dream Studies},
author = {Baptista, Johann and Derakhshani, Max and Tressoldi, Patrizio},
year = {2015},
journal = {Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century (E. Cardeña, J. Palmer, & D. Marcusson-Clavertz, Eds.), McFarland},
}